Monthly Archives: September 2016

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Best Free Music Notation Softwares

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Here is the list of best free Music notation or score softwares around the web. Though these softwares can not compete in most of the cases with sheer amount of editing power, in depth notation features and a great sounding audio engine and usability; of some of the best commercial available softwares in the market. But if you don’t want to spend a lot of money on a score transcribing softwares and likes freebies which can actually work. This list will provide you with fully functional and good to get work done score writing softwares.

1. MuseScore :- MuseScore is one of the best free score software available on the market. It provides all features you need to start transcribing your music. It is compatible with many operating systems including mac, windows, linux and FreeBS. MuseScore offer note selection, note editing, page formatting and inputing text option and more. MuseScore has its built in audio playback engine which can play the score. It can open MIDI, musicXML, and a few proprietary save formats. In exporting apart from printing and saving in its own MuseScore file, It can also export the score to various non-MuseScore files, such as PDF, MusicXML, MIDI, and various audio and image formats. The Best thing is you can score for as many as instrument you want no limitation in number of voices/instruments allowed. MuseScore  provides very good getting started video and a detailed handbook.

2.Finale NotePad :-  Finale Notepad is truncated version of Finale which is one of the top notch notation software. Finale Notepad is limited to eight staves. It can export and open Notation Files, MIDI, and Music XML. It is has very less features compared to other free notation softwares. But its user interface is well organized and looks more  good. In terms of playback capability, Finale NotePad’s playback engine has 128 instrument sounds built and provides a cool Human Playback feature which try to plays notation with the nuance and expression of human performers. Finale NotePad also offer some video tutorials go get you started.

3.LilyPond :-  Lilypond is more like programming language rather than user interface based software. In LilyPond music is written by typing text rather unlike any other notation software by dragging notes from a graphical toolbar and placing them on a dynamically refreshing score. At first it can look complicated and not user friendly. But it offers a very extensive score transcribing capabilities like unlimited instruments and ability to write texts apart from notes. It opens and exports PDF files. LilyPond provide very good documentation to learn how to use this software and start transcribing music in text based environment which might look alien to many people.

4. Denemo :- Denemo is a free notation software which uses the LilyPond music engraver. Music can be typed in at the compute Keyboard, or played in via MIDI controller, or input acoustically into a microphone plugged into your computer’s sound card. Its note input method is unique. You can use numeric keys as your rhythm instrument, you play in a phrase or two of the music using the number keys to indicate the note durations; and playing the phrase a second time a instrument selected for that stave it adds the pitches to the rhythm. So You have to play the right notes in the right order, but your timing can be as sloppy as you like. It provides importing from MusicXML, MIDI, and LilyPond formats, printing full score or parts, exporting to MIDI, Ogg, Wav, LilyPond(parts or score), PDF and Png formats. It also has very good starting tutorial videos and documentations.

 

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Album Mastering Basics

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In this post i will give an overview of what  goes during Album mastering . These are the certain things which every mastering engineer have in mind while mastering an album.

Long Story short :-  Songs of an album are put together one after another. Then by playing those tracks, one after another or jumping from one song to another in non linear fashion the Mastering Engineer is going to achieve a well balanced sound in terms of  Loudness and Frequency. once the cohesive tonal quality and loudness of the album is achieved. Its then matched up with the loudness of  other commercial released album of same genre. And in last step the process of conversion to various release medium specific formats like CD, Digital Audio, Radios, Youtube etc are done.

Long Story : Details Of Album Mastering Process

Like mastering of a song in album mastering the primary audio processor used are the same infamous trio of mastering the equalizer, compressor in conjunction with its multi band variant and limiter; but in this case these are going to be used to achieve a cohesive  sounding album.

Once the mastering session has started, The typical workflow in the course of creating a final master album that contains multiple audio files is as follows.

1. Putting Tracks In Order :- The very first step of  album mastering is to arrange all the tracks of a album in a one after other fashion.

2. Loudness Matching Of Tracks:- Mixing of a album may occur over several days, weeks, or even months and may be some times multiple engineers work on a mix, due to these mixing factors there can be a difference between loudness level  among various tracks of the album. Hence all of the musical pieces need to be balanced for loudness level so that they sound like they are essentially the same volume, when played together one after other or jumping from one song to another in non linear fashion like what is going to happen in real situation after the release of the album. This loudness balancing between various tracks  gives idea that all tracks belong to the same album.

3. Frequency Balancing :- To get overall balanced tonal quality of the album or in other words to craft the cohesiveness of the album; Adjusting the frequency balance of the various tracks of the album so that they all sound relatively similar. For example, one song may sound like it has more bottom end than another. Taken individually this may not be a problem both songs sound great but when they are played one right after the other or jumping from one song to another in non linear fashion, one song may suffer in contrast to the other. So, the mastering engineer will adjust the low frequencies of one of the songs (more on the song that has less low end, or less on the song that has more or a little bit of each) to achieve a similar balanced frequency between songs.

4.Loudness Matching With Reference :- After achieving a cohesive and balanced sound of the album, now its time to match the loudness of the album to various commercial released albums.

5. Preapairing Audio For Various Releases :-  After achieving the desired loudness and tonal charecter of the album, usually compact discs [CDs, or Disc Description Protocol (DDP) files used to manufacture CDs], and in case of digital release MP3 accompanied with uncompressed Audio File (WAV,AIFF) are created.

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Update to macOS Sierra Or Not From Music/Audio Production Perspective ?

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Hello in this post i am going to discusses whether to update your macOS to latest release of macOS version or not. In this article i will talk about update to macOS 10.12 Sierra, but this knowledge can be utilized for any OS update/upgrade of a working music/audio environments. These are general guidelines you need to have in mind  before updating your macOS so that it will not mess up with your precious working hours .


1.  Compatibility Check Of DAW:-  This is one of the very important step, before updating/upgrading OS of any working audio facility. Always ensure from the company or various companies in case you are using multiple DAWs, the compatibility of the DAW with the new macOS before updating/upgrading. it will save a lot of time and can also be a crucial factor in deciding any kind of OS related update.

2. Compatibility Check Of Plugin :-  This is another very important step, before updating/upgrading OS of any working audio facility. Always ensure from various plugins companies that you use, the compatibility of the plugins with the new macOS before updating/upgrading. it can also be a crucial factor depending on the uses of certain plugin in your production environment and its current status of compatibility with the macOS.

3. Compatibility Check Of Hardware :- It is also one of the most important thing need to consider,  if you use alot of USB Midi devices, sound cards, digital mixer etc in your work environment. Always check the compatibility of your Hardware with the new os. otherwise new os update can render you hardware useless and cause you to roll back to old os. which can be tricky some times specially with nowadays macOS, which do not want you to revert back.

Once you checked these most important three things you can proceed with your update/upgrade.

Apart from main steps there are some optional steps which can ensure a very stable work environment. many Engineers, Producers, Composers like to take these optional steps . Though these steps can lengthen the time when you get a updated system but these extra steps ensures very stable and robust work environment.

4. Wait For Some Updates :-  wait for sometime when new OS arrives let it update for a couple of times, by that time any serious bug which needed to fix will get fixed and you are going to have a fairly stable new macOS.

5. Wait For Review From Fellow :-  Let other people from audio industry update their OS to new macOS and than take their first hand advice on issues like stability of DAW/Plugins/Hardware of this new macOS.

Note :- Most time your DAW/Plugin/Hardware company will email you in advance with compatibility list of their products with new OS, so read those mails.